One of the PCs is dead, and he's going to create a new character. Are there any guidelines to create higher rank Acolytes?

Also, the surviving acolytes have XPs ranging from the low 2000 to the high 3000… how many XP should I allow the new acolyte to start with?

The minimum of the party? the average? what about Insanity and Corruption points?

Any suggestion is welcome!

I'd say 2500-2700 xp should do nicely. As for IP and CP. I'd just do it like this: Take whatever rank they'd start at (Lets say rank 4. They would have to take 4d10 worth of IP and 4d5 worth of CP. However, they should be allowed to reduce this number of dice rolled by their STARTING WP bonus. So say they rolled a 27 (20+2d10 for a total of 27) for WP. they would only have to roll 2d10 and 2d5 for IP and CP respectively. This would be before any characteristic advances btw. Thats how i'd do it anyway . Hope that helps!

In my group's previous D&D 3.5 campaigns, we used the rule of starting replacement/new characters at the midpoint of the level below the lowest level member of the party. Since there are no real guidelines for replacement characters in WH40KRP, we ported this rule over into our DH campaign when we took on a new player; no complaints so far- the new player is not badly underpowered compared to the rest of the party, and the penalty of loosing half a level if their character is killed prevents anyone from being too reckless with their existing characters.

Why do the surviving Acolytes have varying XP levels? If you ask me, all Acolytes should be kept on equal XP levels.

Also I'd provide an option to have the new guy start with more Corruption than Insanity if he likes. 100 of each is a death sentence either way (unless you also play Black Crusade).

Boss Gitsmasha said:

When a player doesn't show up to a game, he doesn't get XP.

My group also uses a POG, or player of the game system. At the end of a session all the players and the GM vote on who they thought did a great job roleplaying, was entertaining or solo uncovered something very important to the plot. This character gets a little bit of bonus XP (if an average session yields 400, theyd get 450).

Boss Gitsmasha said:

2 things:

Insanity is not a death sentence, you may reduce it at the rate of 1 per 100 experience through meditation and rest.

Players should not feel entitled to equal experience. Each character has different strengths, weaknesses, and suffers differently. If one player heroically sacrifices life and limb for a noble cause, and as a result suffers crippling emotional trauma and potentially irreparable physical damage, why should he not receive greater experience? He suffered more, he did more, and now he has to make up for that by spending experience to compensate.

Further, as Kasatka has excellently demonstrated, this is a roleplaying game. A player should feel like there is something to strive for. If you can just mope along and shoot things and get the same experience as the man who drive the story forward with purpose and valiantly commits to his character, to the enjoyment an pleasure of all present, he should get something above and beyond. If you dislike falling behind someone in experience, the solution is simple: Don't hate the game, play it! Ask how to improve roleplaying skills, or just commit further!

Wow, did I ever just tangent right off there. Whoopsies.

I will admit that we play the game in a more investigative style- and I gave EXP equally to all of my players. The Exp is granted based on overall success of the mission- combat and investigation included. But they don't get "Scene specific EXP" Sometimes some players will do more than others, other times another player will shine. Though I try to include a small section for everybody where they can show off their skills, but ultimately, I am trying to get the players themselves to come up with these situations with a more free-form sandbox approach.

But we agreed on a sort of a system for new characters- The very first characters they created were point buy. After the first death, the second character had to roll his stats (two tables pick the one you want, reassign stats, so still very good.) Third death was a 200 Exp penalty [that doesn't add up… I would have wanted it too, but the guys were like "Lets leave it at that for now.] So far this has worked out just fine- but in my group, there's really only one player that tends to die much more than the others, so much so its a bit of a running joke!

Only one character has survived all the way from the first session- he's at about 7k Exp, and we've been playing for Over 8 months at the average rate of 2 a month with sessions lasting from 8 to 12 (On three occasions) hours.

Now, what we also did was in terms of money, insanity and corruption points. That's where new players take a MUCH bigger hit than the older ones (who find lots of thrones and get rewarded quite a bit for their successes or punished for their failures.] Starting players get 12 months worth of raw salary at whatever rank were at, which usually doesn't amount to THAT much compared to the rest- to balance it out, they get the option to decide exactly when [at which rank] they started working for the Inquisition. For each rank remaining afterwards, they get 500 Gold of rewards and gathered up funds from their past BUT take 1d10 Insanity and 1d5 Corruption to represent their past experiences [same as Clutch! But I don't reduce that by anything].

They can choose how many of them they want- up to the maximum rank the others are currently at (which is Six now.) So most players will start with an extra 3k Gold, but 6d10 Insanity and 6d5 Corruption, which keeps everyone at about the same level.

Now, what broke the system a bit is the Noble-borns: twelve months of Salary is a LOT. It didn't break the system as much as allowed them to start off MUCH richer than the rest (at about 13-14k depending on my deals with the players.) And Squeezing the Vendetta into the Campaign (the negative aspect of the Noble-born) becomes more of a pain to me, the GM, as now I have to introduce another faction into my already convoluted plot!

Saldre said:

Purely hypothetical, but if a player for you wanted to roll a Battle Sister would you let them make the argument for no corruption under the pretense that they would have tried to avoid those Cps (probably through the use of True Faith)? Just wondering

Boss Gitsmasha said:

Skeletor said:

Yes- but seeing as he's with the Order, and the Inquisition doesn't pay him as such (he requisitions items as needed or per his rank instead) then this would be non-issue, as I likely wouldn't give him as much Thrones [if he gets any at all.] I think that the fact that he's allowed to grab a Plasma Pistol at rank 4 or 5 or whatever is the Equivalent of having received that much of a salary per rank.

Edit- now that I think about it, that issue might pop-up with Clerics that start with the True Faith talent. So I'd say yes, if you have that talent, maybe you don't have to roll that many die. Perhaps each fate point you have keeps you from rolling 1d5, so a cleric with three or four fate points would largely mitigate the Corruption. I haven't run into it yet- but thank you for bringing it to my attention: I will be prepared for it now

I tend to start new characters at 200 xp less than the party average, and in rare cases where a characer died heroically they may start at the xp level of the deceased character.

IP and CP wise i go for 1d10 per rank for Insanity and 1d5 per rank for CP with -1 per point of WP bonus at character creation

There is actually a section in Ascension that covers making characters from scratch for Ascension level play. I won't do a copy/paste job but basically there is a bottom-up approach, similar to how you naturally grow a character with XP and there is a top-down approach, wherein you pick what attribute advances you want first, then how many sound constitutions (limited by class with a hard limit!), then tier 3 talents working backwards to meet their pre-reqs and finally skills and to what level you want them. This second system provides better focus when re-rolling a character after death or joining an existing group. The section also covers how much IP(d10s) and CP (d5s) you gain for the amount of experience you start with, with the ability to reduce the number of dice rolled downwards by your WP bonus.

Whilst i personally think that Ascension is a little broken and unbalanced, the character creation in it is in fact superior to that found in the core game so i would wholeheartedly recommend it.